Ground Invasion or Nukes?

by Paul Larudee, published on Substack, March 7, 2026

Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s greatness was in his wisdom and his morality. He was right in condemning nuclear and chemical weapons, but I believe he failed to acknowledge the side of human nature that requires fear of consequences to limit the worst impulses of human beings.

I suspect that there may be many Iranians that now regret Khamanei’s decision not to build and test a nuclear weapon. It could have been the decisive deterrent to the current war waged by the US and Israel against Iran.

Of course, the reasons for a US war against Iran are in any case utterly absurd. No one believes that Iran poses a strategic or security threat to the US. The only complaint against Iran is its support for the Palestinian people’s struggle for their human and national rights against the Zionist Israeli ethnic cleansing project in order to rob them of their land and heritage. Iran’s motive is entirely unselfish and in support of human rights.

This is why Iran is vilified in the US, because only hatred can motivate a population to go to war. This principle is older than Macchiavelli and Sun Tzu. It matters not whether the motive is rational or not, but ignorance, prevarication and fabrication of evidence fill the satchel of the purveyors of death.

In the case of Iran, those purveyors are Benjamin Netanyahu and his coterie of genocidal maniacs, armed with Epsteinian corruption and blackmail as well as control over the system by which candidates are selected for public office and then manipulated after election or appointment. The method is applied mainly in the US and other NATO countries, but also in India, Russia and others that can be seduced in a similar manner. In the US, possession of photographic and video evidence in the hands of Israeli government officials might be sufficient to gain compliance by some of the world’s most powerful leaders.

What is the current effect of these manipulations of power? As described in my recent articles, such manipulations are responsible for the attacks on Iran in June, 2025, January, 2026, and of course the current war, none of which were initiated by Iran. In addition, none of them were for the realization of any gain by the US – only by Israel.

It is therefore important to consider, in the current context, how far Netanyahu is prepared to go to realize his objectives and ambitions. Thus far, his dreams of emptying Gaza and the West Bank, and making Palestine entirely Jewish have not been fulfilled. However, Israel’s destruction of its regional rivals has always been a high priority for him. Iran has always headed the list, and most of the others on that list – Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Sudan – have already been largely destroyed. Netanyahu has tried to destroy Iran three times in the last year. He is determined to fight to the last American GI to achieve this goal.

But how? As predicted by many of Trump’s military and intelligence advisors, the current war is going badly. Iranian investment in inexpensive but relatively sophisticated missiles and drones has dealt – and is dealing – a major blow to US and Israeli military and strategic assets and installations in the region, and interdiction of the passage of petroleum through the Strait of Hormuz is already beginning to adversely affect world prices.

US military strategists are beginning to realize that they are not going to bring Iran to its knees through an air campaign, much less a naval one. They are already losing too many of their installations and weaponry, and their supply is more limited than Iran’s. Even their trillion-dollar aircraft carriers are potentially vulnerable to Iran’s hypersonic missiles. They appear to be considering ground troops, despite the logistical constraints and the manpower imbalance. Is there any reason to expect a ground campaign to be more effective than the air war? A ground war is always to the advantage of the defender, and are we going to have a new Vietnam or Iraq, body bags, draft dodgers and all?

I’m sure Netanyahu is willing, and Trump hates to lose. But Trump will lose Congress, and Netanyahu may find members of Congress insufficiently willing to face constituents that are losing their loved ones on a meaningless battlefield, or to face soldiers like the former Marine who had to be removed by force from the US Senate, shouting “No war for Israel.”

Unfortunately, there is another option available to Netanyahu, which I also articulated in a recent article. That is the nuclear option. He has not yet used his nukes to avoid Iranian missiles dropping on Tel Aviv, but that doesn’t mean he won’t, or that Trump can’t be made complicit in their use. It is impossible to assess the degree of risk that this might happen, but it would be unwise to underestimate Netanyahu’s determination to finish the job, nor his willingness to use Israel’s nuclear arsenal for this purpose.